ISIS and Mithras

ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is a Sunni jihadist group with a particularly violent

ideology that calls itself a caliphate and claims religious authority over all Muslims. ISIS was

founded by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi. It was inspired by al Qaida but later publicly

expelled from it. It quickly took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria, raising its black flag in

victory and declaring the creation of a caliphate and imposing strict Islamic rule. Its tactics —

including beheadings, the taking of slaves and bans on “un-Islamic” behavior such as music and

smoking — are so brutal that it was even disowned by al Qaeda.

Mithras, in ancient Indo-Iranian mythology, is the god of light, whose cult spread from

India in the east to as far west as Spain, Great Britain, and Germany. According to myth, Mithras

was born, bearing a torch and armed with a knife, beside a sacred stream and under a sacred tree,

a child of the earth itself. He soon rode, and later killed, the life-giving cosmic bull, whose blood

fertilizes all vegetation. Mithras’s slaying of the bull was a popular subject of Hellenic art and

became the prototype for a bull-slaying ritual of fertility in the Mithraic cult.